School Spotlight

University of Kentucky

Location:Lexington, Kentucky

Type:Public

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Speech Code Rating

University of Kentucky has been given the speech code rating Yellow. Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.
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Bullying, including Cyberbullying, is repeated or hostile behaviors that a reasonable person would find intimidating or that would harm or distress another person, but fall short of being harassment. This provision shall not be used to discipline Students for speech protected by the First Amendment.
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Members of the student body, faculty, and/or staff of the University may distribute on behalf of registered student organizations free-of-charge non-commercial announcements, statements, or materials at any reasonable outdoor area on the campus. Such distribution must be consistent with the orderly conduct of Univer... Read More

Harm and Threat of Harm includes physical abuse, verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, harassment, force, or other conduct that causes injury or a reasonable expectation of injury to the physical or mental health or safety of another person.
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Sexual harassment – a form of sex discrimination – includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical actions of a sexual nature when submission to such conduct is made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of the Student’s status in a course, program or ac... Read More

Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it substantially interferes with the ability of a person to work, learn, live or participate in, or benefit from services, activities, or privileges provided by UK.
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Planned or spontaneous demonstrations, meetings, or assemblies may be conducted in those appropriate areas of the campus that are regularly available to the public, provided such demonstrations, meetings, or other assemblies:
A. Are conducted in a lawful and peaceful manner;
B. Do not prohibit vehicular or pedestria... Read More

A Student has the right to engage in discussion, to exchange thought and opinion, to speak, write, or print freely on any subject, and to join associations in accordance with the guarantees of federal or state Constitutions.
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At present, FIRE has not been publicly involved in any cases at this school.

The University of Kentucky will have to provide redacted records of a Title IX investigation — and specific justifications for those redactions — to a state circuit court for review, after a ruling Friday by the Kentucky Court of Appeals. That amounts to a win for UK’s student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, which has been… Read more

In August 2017, Dr. Raynor Mullins, a faculty member at the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry, filed suit against UK alleging that the university violated his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him after he criticized Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s proposed Medicaid plan. Earlier this month, Mullins and UK settled the lawsuit for $620,000…. Read more

FIRE announces our Speech Code of the Month for May 2018: the University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky’s Bias Incident Response Team threatens to seriously chill freedom of speech for the university’s more than 30,000 students and faculty. Bias response teams like Kentucky’s are burgeoning on campuses around the country. As FIRE exclusively reported… Read more

The University of Kentucky (UK) can withhold records related to the sexual assault claims made against a former professor under student privacy law, a judge ruled Monday—but the judge’s ruling doesn’t make sense under the law it cites. The records in question relate to university investigations of former Associate Professor of Entomology James Harwood, who… Read more

Earlier this week, a federal court dismissed a student’s lawsuit against University of Kentucky administrators under a doctrine requiring that federal courts defer to state proceedings under certain circumstances. The court’s decision turned on its conclusion that the student’s sexual misconduct hearing at the University of Kentucky was an official “state proceeding … akin to… Read more

The University of Kentucky (UK) has apparently failed to notice that universities are increasingly being forced to get rid of their ironically named “free speech zones,” whether by state legislation or costly lawsuits. UK currently maintains two “Designated Unrestricted Areas,” which constitute the small fraction of the campus where a reservation is not required for… Read more

Tomorrow, FIRE’s Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Will Creeley heads to the Bluegrass State to discuss student rights at the University of Kentucky (UK) and Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). At both schools, Creeley will examine the state of the law on freedom of speech on today’s college campuses, discussing the decades of legal precedent… Read more

On Monday, a University of Kentucky student posted a video on YouTube that showed him berating some police officers who entered his dormitory, according to Photography is Not a Crime. Warning: the video includes profanity. According to Tyler Kingkade of The Huffington Post, the University of Kentucky has now fired the police officer in question, which makes… Read more

There’s a movement afoot in state legislatures to ban employers and universities from demanding control of or monitoring the social media accounts of their students or employees. One such bill specifically aimed at students unanimously passed the California Senate yesterday. Advocates of these laws justifiably worry that, when students are required to provide their usernames… Read more

Another week, another newspaper theft on campus. Inside Higher Ed reports today that 4,500 copies of the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, were stolen on Monday, becoming the latest example of a disturbing trend on campus. As Tara reported just last Thursday, newspaper thefts have occurred in the past few weeks at… Read more